Thursday, March 31, 2016

God's control in our pain

           




           Sitting in church on Good Friday next to my sister in law, as  she bounced her five month old on her lap I was hit with thoughts like “I should be bouncing my four month old, I should be taking my crying baby out of the service, this would be my son’s first Easter”.
            It is hard to wrap my mind around missing someone you never actually met, someone that you don’t know a thing about their personality. I miss my son. I miss all the things I did not get to experience with him all the smiles and kisses that are lost, birthdays never to be celebrated. 
            The verse that is famously quoted by every Christian mother when she is pregnant was never so precious to me as is it was when I lost a baby. 
“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
 Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.” Psalm 139:13-16 (ESV)

            The truth is our children are not “lost” at all.  In eternity past God wrote the exact number of days each one of them would live. They did not live one day less or one day more than he intended or that they should have. This should not have been my son’s first Easter with me, I should not be holding him right now even though I desperately want to be.  God is good, my friends, he knows the pain you are enduring and he allowed it anyway. His purpose is to give you more of HIM.  God is an unending fountain of grace and mercy and he is willing to pour it out to you now.  We are locked into the perspective of time, stuck for the rest of our lives with a missing family member, but God holds eternity and he sees the end of the story where we are restored and made new, having forgotten the sting of death forever. He has your child, secure and with him—we are waiting for eternity, our children are already there.

             

           If you struggle with wondering where you child is now, please take the time to listen to John MacArthur’s sermons on the subject. 

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